small scale community

“The last time Americans fled the cities for the suburbs, from the 1950s to the 1980s, they were driven primarily by fear of crime. This time the migration is the consequence of the cities’ success, not their failure. Housing
and rental prices in many of the country’s largest metro areas have soared, inspiring residents to pack up and move out.

As more young people decamp from the cities to the suburbs, … a hybrid might develop, where people who leave cities—especially the most vibrant and expensive ones—will gravitate to places with similar amenities. Or transform them—as is happening in San Marcos. Though it has its fair share of cookie-cutter homes and strip malls, its well-preserved old downtown boasts a brewery and beer garden, a yoga studio and, now, a bootcamp boutique.”

Pocket Neighborhoods: Creating Small Scale Community in a Large Scale World introduces an antidote to faceless, placeless sprawl — real neighborhoods of a scale and design where people can easily know one another; where empty nesters and single householders with far-flung families can find friendship or a helping hand nearby; and where children can have shirt-tail aunties and uncles just beyond their front gate.

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Sprawl remains the prevailing growth pattern across the United States, even though experts in planning, economics and environmental issues have long denounced it as wasteful, inefficient, and unsustainable. Sprawl is a principal cause of lost open space and natural habitat as well as increases in air and water pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, infrastructure costs, and even obesity. It also plays a primary role in the housing meltdown plaguing the nation. But is it possible to repair sprawling suburbs and create more livable, robust, and eco-sensitive communities where they do not now exist? This new book answers with a resounding "yes" and provides a toolbox of creative approaches for doing just that.
The Sprawl Repair Manual offers comprehensive guidance for transforming fragmented, isolated and car-dependent development into "complete communities." Polemical as well as practical, the manual is designed to equip readers - from professional planners, designers, and developers to regulators and concerned citizens - with strategies drawn from two decades of successful repair projects.
In contrast to sprawl - characterized by an abundance of congested highways, strip development, and gated cul-de-sac subdivisions - complete communities are diverse in terms of uses, transportation options, and population. They are walkable, with most daily needs close by.
There is a wealth of research and literature explaining the origins and problems of suburban sprawl, as well as the urgent need to repair it. However, the Sprawl Repair Manual is the first book to provide a step-by-step design, regulatory, and implementation process. From the scale of the region to the building - turning subdivisions into walkable neighborhoods, shopping centers and malls into town centers, and more - today's sprawl can be saved. Readers who have despaired of ever being able to "take back the suburbs" will find heartening news between the covers of this first-of-its-kind book.